INTERIOR OF A HOVA HOUSE. 199 



The interior arrangements of a Hova house are very simple, 

 and are almost always the same. 



Let us, following Malagasy politeness, call out before we 

 enter, " Haody, Haody," equivalent to, " May we come in ? " 

 And while we wait a minute or two, during which the good 

 woman of the house is reaching down a clean mat for us to 

 sit down on, we notice that the threshold is raised a foot or 

 more above the ground on either side, sometimes a couple 

 of feet, so that a stone is placed as a step on either side to 

 go up and down. Entering the house in response to the 

 hospitable welcome, H&ndrosda, Tompohod, " Walk forward, 

 sir" (or madam), we step over the raised threshold. In 

 some parts of Imerina a kind of closet, looking more like a 

 large oven than anything else, is made of clay at the south- 

 eastern corner, opposite the door, and here, as in an Irish 

 cabin, the pig finds a place at night, and above it the fowls 

 roost. Very near the door the large wooden mortar or 

 laona for pounding rice generally stands, and near it are the 

 fandto or pestle, and the saMfa or shallow round wooden dish 

 in which the rice is winnowed from the husk removed by 

 pounding. At about the middle of the eastern side of the 

 house are placed three or four globular sinys or water-pots, 

 the mouths covered with a kind of basket to keep out the 

 dust. Farther on, but near the west side, is the fdtana or . 

 hearth, a small enclosure of about three or four feet square. 

 In this are fixed five stones, on which the rice cooking-pots 

 are arranged over the fire. And over this is sometimes fixed 

 a light framework upon which the cooking-pots are placed 

 when not hi use. There is no chimney, the smoke finding 

 its way out through window or door or slowly through the 

 rush roofing, and so the house is generally black and sooty 

 above, long strings of soot hanging down from the roof. The 

 north-east corner of the house is the sacred portion of it, and 

 is called zdro firardzana, where any religious act connected 

 with the former idolatry was done, and near which the sampy 

 or household charm was generally kept in a basket suspended 

 to the wall. In this corner is the fixed bedstead, which is 

 often raised up some height above the ground and reached by a 

 notched post serving as a ladder, and generally screened round 



